


Something About Christmas Time

by roaroftheninth



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Christmas, Fix-It, Gen, Ice Skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:39:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roaroftheninth/pseuds/roaroftheninth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark and Eduardo go skating to work out some differences before the Christmas dinner that Chris and Dustin have decided they are having, two years post-lawsuit.</p><p>--</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Skating Part

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Coyotebee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coyotebee/gifts).



Mark, of all people, knew how to skate.

 

Eduardo guessed that he had known that Mark had grown up in a place where it could potentially get icy in the winter, but he was sure that he had never pictured this: Mark turning slow backwards crossovers in a big, lazy circle around him, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie like this was easy and falling was not a concern. Mark was not preternaturally graceful or anything like that – it was still Mark, after all, and skates aren’t miracle-workers – but he had an air of surety about him, like he was on autopilot.

 

This was not the Mark who spent hours at his computer in another world. This was a task that didn’t require innovation, and his body moved without him having to think about it much. That was probably why his eyes were dark and glued to Eduardo, who was simply standing still.

 

 “You wanted to do something that normal people do at Christmas,” Mark pointed out.

 

“I did say that,” Eduardo admitted. He felt uneasy, like his feet were going to betray him at any second.

 

“And then Chris suggested skating, and you said yes,” Mark continued.

 

“I kind of thought that neither of us would know how,” Eduardo muttered, watching a kid with an ice-walker go by and wishing they made those for grown people.

 

“So you’re upset because I’m good at something,” Mark stated, like he had forgotten that it was supposed to be a question.

 

“I’m not upset,” Eduardo said. “I’m just – would you stop?” Mark’s circles around him were getting tighter and tighter.

 

Mark pulled up short in front of him and waited, watching. Eduardo reached out mittened hands and grabbed Mark’s, ignoring the surprise and conflict that crossed Mark’s face.

 

“Teach me,” he demanded.

 

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you have six hundred million dollars? Hire Kurt Browning or something.”

 

Eduardo didn’t even blink. “You owe me.”

 

“Oh, did I forget the tip on that bill?” Mark asked sarcastically.

 

“You forgot the asshole tax,” Eduardo said flatly. “Teach me how to skate.”

 

Mark let a beat pass before he pushed off into backwards motion, pulling Eduardo, who made what could most charitably be described as a squawk of surprise.

 

“We don’t have to do this,” Eduardo pointed out, as he caught his balance and got used to the feeling of moving at that speed.

 

“I thought you wanted me to teach you how to skate,” Mark said, deliberately missing the point.

 

“You know what I meant,” Eduardo said, a little waspishly.

 

“It’s been two years.” Mark’s face was shuttered. He let go of one of Eduardo’s hands and swung around so that they were facing in the same direction. “Push off sideways with one foot, then the other. And we have to be at the same meetings and parties. We might as well be civil.”

 

“You actually wore a tie to the last shareholder meeting,” Eduardo recalled, pushing off on one side and lurching forward. “Although, it didn’t match.”

 

“You know I’m colour blind,” Mark replied, tightening his grip on Eduardo’s hand as his jerky strides started costing them both their balance.

 

“Does colour blindness prevent you from knowing that you don’t wear a plaid tie with a striped shirt?” Eduardo asked, watching his own feet.

 

Mark gave him a snarky look. “Remind me why I liked you.”

 

“I don’t need you to like me,” Eduardo said patiently, trying not to be hurt because weighed against everything else, it was just the smallest instance of Mark forgetting that he could wound people. “We just need to be able to act like grown-ups when we’re in a business environment.”

 

“Plus, your mother says it’s bad karma to harbour feelings of rage and antipathy toward someone and she wants you to get to a healthier place emotionally,” Mark added, picking up their pace.

 

Eduardo put out a hand for balance as he turned to give Mark an irritated look. “Would you stop reading my e-mails?”

 

“Did you know that it took me the better part of a week to track down your new e-mail address? And then I find out that you didn’t even get a new password.” Mark sounded mildly disappointed.

 

“Yeah, because you know I’d have to write it down, and I’d leave it somewhere – and oh my God, I’m justifying my actions to the guy who electronically  _stalks me_ ,” Eduardo said in disbelief. “For no good reason other than that you don’t like not winning and this makes you feel like you still own me. Don’t think I don’t see that, Mark. I don’t have to  _read your e-mails_  to know you.”

 

“It’s not stalking, it’s keeping tabs,” Mark corrected, his face blank. “At first I just liked reading e-mails from you again, even if they weren’t to me. It made me hate you less.”

 

Eduardo stared at him. Mark stared back. Eduardo thought,  _Oh._

 

“Also you’re skating by yourself.”

 

As soon as Eduardo realized that Mark wasn’t holding onto his hand, he gave a nasty wobble. He practically lurched into Mark, who was grinning but not unkindly.

 

“Holy hell,” Eduardo said breathlessly, hands wrapped in Mark’s sweater. “I feel like I almost died but that it was awesome.”

 

“Oh ye of little faith,” Mark told him. “Do you think I’d let you die right before Chris’ Christmas dinner?”

 

“No, you’re right,” Eduardo mused. “He’d kill you and Dustin would help hide the body.”

 

Mark snorted a little. “No, Dustin’s on my side.”

 

Eduardo laughed. “You only think that because you haven’t worked for you. Trust me, he’s biding his time.”

 

As Eduardo straightened and stood on his own feet, unconsciously smoothing his hair, Mark looked past him at the trees lining the edge of the park and the city beyond. “Do you think we’ll get back?” He asked.

 

“To Chris’? Oh, yeah, it’s only – ” Eduardo looked at his watch but realized even as he was doing it that perhaps he had misinterpreted. “Did you mean...”  _You and me_ , he thought, but it was suddenly hard to make the words.

 

“I meant to Chris’,” Mark said, his expression enigmatic. “What did you think I meant?”He took a few easy strokes backward to put fifteen feet between him and Eduardo. “You can do this by yourself now,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of Eduardo’s skates.

 

Eduardo studied him for a second. Then, almost hesitantly, he took his first few awkward strides forward. “Merry Christmas to you, too,” he said under his breath.

 

But some of the bitterness was gone.


	2. The Christmas Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark and Eduardo attend Chris' Christmas dinner. Dustin drinks much holiday punch.

Dustin opened the door holding a bottle of beer and wearing a Christmas cracker paper crown.

 

“ _Wardo_!” He shouted, flinging his free arm around him. He beamed at Mark over Eduardo’s shoulder. “Hello. Glad to see you two haven’t injured each other.”

 

Pulling away, he stepped back to let them in. “Come in, come in! I will get you drinks. They will be holiday punch because the holiday punch is amazing. I only switched to beer because I already drank eight glasses of holiday punch and Chris said that I wasn’t allowed to drink all of the holiday punch before you got here.”

 

He spun around and bounced down the corridor to the kitchen.

 

Eduardo turned to look at Mark and laughed at his expression. “Give me your coat. I’ll let you follow him so that you don’t have to miss a single minute of holiday cheer.”

 

Mark glowered, but handed off his jacket and trekked down the hall to the kitchen-dining room area, where Dustin was bopping along to Christmas carols as he ladled something pink into Christmas glasses. Chris had the phone tucked between his shoulder and ear while he sliced bread, and he waved when Mark came into the kitchen.

 

“He made the no-phones rule and then broke his own rule,” Dustin said loftily, handing Mark a glass.

 

“I said no working, and that includes phones,” Chris clarified. “This isn’t work, it’s my mom. She makes the meanest stuffing in the South so I am happily taking cooking directions.”

 

“Hi, Chris’ mom!” Dustin hollered happily, as Eduardo came into the kitchen. “Wardo! Here’s your punch.”  

 

Eduardo accepted the glass and looked around. There was a plethora of pots, pans, and dishes on most surfaces in the usually tidy kitchen. “Wow, Chris. You really went all out.”

 

“Uh huh,” Chris said, hanging up the phone and distractedly putting it down on top of the fridge, which was the only surface available. “Christmas is the mother of all holiday monstrosities where I’m from. If you don’t have leftovers past New Years, you’re not doing it right.”

 

Dustin retrieved the phone and put it on its cradle as Chris checked the turkey.

 

“You even made latkes,” Eduardo said, impressed, as he studied the contents of various pans.

 

“Well, the irony of having a massive Christmas dinner for my Jewish friends is not lost on me,” Chris replied dryly, adjusting the knobs on the oven. “Do you want to toss the salad? We’re almost ready to eat. You two were out longer than we anticipated.” He looked back and forth between Mark and Eduardo briefly, but didn’t comment further.

 

“Sure,” Eduardo said, unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves. “Point me in the direction of the salad materials.”

 

In the meantime, Dustin and Mark had wandered over to the window as Dustin loudly and enthusiastically described his holiday shopping adventures.

 

“ _Plus_ , dude. Dude, you don’t even know. I did all of my shopping online but then I  _still_  went to the mall because I can’t not go to the mall right before Christmas. Know why?”

 

“Because you like throngs of frantic people mouth-breathing on you?” Mark suggested.

 

“No, Scrooge, because people are  _nicer_  to each other at Christmas,” Dustin retorted. “It’s cool to go be a part of the good-natured craziness for awhile. Speaking of. How went the skating?”

 

Mark took a studied interest in the view of the skyline. “It went.”

 

“Come on, man, you’re killing me,” Dustin complained. “Did you talk about it? Did you apologize?”

 

Mark looked at him sharply. “I will when he does.”

 

Dustin threw up his hands. “You are hopeless.”

 

“Yeah, because I’m the only one not acting like an adult here,” Mark snapped. “Whose side are you on?”

 

“I’m on Chris’ side,” Dustin told him, with a surprising streak of steel. “You guys need to cut it out and stop putting us in the middle.” He took a sip of his beer and glanced back at the kitchen, where Eduardo was looking through a drawer for something while talking animatedly to Chris. “I guess I should be happy that you guys are in the same room without physically assaulting each other. Or each other’s laptops.”

 

Mark gritted his teeth. “We’re not twelve. We had a business disagreement but it’s over and we’ve moved on with our lives.”

 

“A  _business disagreement_?” Dustin squawked, so loudly that both Eduardo and Chris looked over. “That’s what we’re calling it now?” Dustin hissed, as the two in the kitchen went back to cooking, although Chris continued throwing concerned glances their way.

 

“That’s what it was,” Mark said, colourless.

 

“This is why you are too stupid to live,” Dustin groaned, facepalming. “A  _business disagreement_ , are you serious.”

 

Mark gave him such a glare that Dustin’s eyes got huge and he folded his arms defensively. “You can’t kill me in here. Chris will save me.”

 

“Oh, I can wait until we go back to California,” Mark said darkly.

 

Dustin poked him in the forehead. “You’re just avoiding the subject with all of this threatening behaviour.”

 

“There’s a reason we don’t talk about this,” Mark said, his voice tight.

 

“The reason we don’t talk about this is because you don’t want to think about how you screwed up something awesome and you’re doing zero things to fix it,” Dustin retorted, in a turn of phrase that reminded Mark suspiciously of Chris.

 

Mark frowned. Dustin looked altogether too triumphant. He wondered when he had lost the ability to scare the bejeezus out of him. “And because usually you haven’t had eight glasses of punch,” he added, deciding to let this one go.

 

Dustin smiled airily. “That’s what you think.”

 

Mark frowned, but Chris announced that dinner was ready and Dustin bolted before he could respond.

 

There turned out to be way more food than four people could conceivably eat in one lifetime. They all snagged plates and helped themselves to everything in the kitchen, since Chris had deemed the dining room table too small to support the amount of dishes that were there. When they did go into the dining room, Mark and Eduardo studiously gravitated to opposite sides of the table, allowing Chris and Dustin to sit between them. Dustin rolled his eyes, but Chris gave him a look and he stifled the comment he had been about to make.

 

“Before everyone starts, I want to make a toast,” Chris announced.

 

“Yes and yes,” Dustin said, shrugging innocently when Chris noticed that he was once again drinking holiday punch.

 

“I want to make a toast to us all being together,” Chris continued, deciding to ignore it. “It’s been awhile.”

 

“Hear, hear,” Dustin added. “To the marshmallowey goodness that is Christmas, joining us all together in its gooey embrace!”

 

Mark’s expression suggested that he did not harbour a strong wish to be gooily embraced.

 

They made it through to dessert without any major incidents. Eduardo noticed right away that Chris was terrifyingly good at steering the conversation away from Facebook. He let it happen for most of the meal, but after the third subtle change of topic (Dustin and Mark apparently found it difficult not to talk shop), Eduardo spoke up.

 

“You can talk about Facebook,” he told them.

 

Three pairs of eyes swivelled around to look at him.

 

Feeling suddenly awkward, Eduardo felt the need to elaborate. “I just mean that I’m not going to burst into tears. I’m a grown man.”

 

Dustin had the grace to look guilty. “I’m really trying not to bring it up. We sort of thought it’d be a bit… insensitive.”

 

“He can handle it,” Mark said, looking straight at Eduardo. “It was just business.”

 

Eduardo frowned. “It was a little more than that, Mark.”

 

“What did you read into it?” Mark challenged.

 

“Don’t you dare fight about that at my Christmas dinner,” Chris cut in. “I will literally murder you both.”

 

“True story,” Dustin agreed. “And I will help to hide the bodies because I am the most superb best friend of all time.”

 

Mark frowned. “There’s never any forum where it’s acceptable to talk about it. What if I want to talk about it?”

 

“Since when do you want to talk about it?” Chris demanded. “You’ve said five words to Eduardo since the depositions ended and now –  _now_  – you want to bring it all up?”

 

“Maybe,” Mark replied, with an infuriatingly neutral shrug.

 

“Literally anywhere or any time but here, dude,” Dustin told him. “Unless you want to apologize and stop being really bitchy to each other, then that would probably be okay.”

 

“I’m not apologizing,” Mark declared immediately, folding his arms.

 

Eduardo’s face twisted. “You always think that nothing’s your fault.”

 

“Apologizing doesn’t mean that you’re admitting guilt, it just means that you value your relationship more than your ridiculous ego,” Chris snapped. “Would you rather be happy, or would you rather be right?” He stood up. “For the record, you were both wrong.”

 

“I was  _not –_ ” Eduardo began, but ducked, with a squawk of outrage, as Dustin used his spoon to catapult a chunk of pie filling in his direction.

 

“Chris is talking,” Dustin announced.

 

“Thank you,” Chris said, without taking his eyes off Mark and Eduardo.

 

Dustin grinned. “Any time, bro. I like Hulk-Chris.”

 

Chris chose to take that in the spirit it was intended. He fixed first Mark, then Eduardo with stern looks. “The point is, it’s been two years and it’s Christmas and it’s about time you stopped trying to wind each other up. It’s over. Get past it or shut up about it. Can we do that?”

 

Mark still had his arms folded, but Eduardo, at least, had the grace to flush slightly. A moment of quiet slid past before Chris took their silence as consent, sat down, and went back to his dinner.

 

Dustin grinned. “Christmas is always way more  _interesting_  here than it is back home.”

 

“Clean up that pie,” Chris replied, without looking up from his own dessert.

 

Dustin feigned innocence. “What pie?”

 

“If I apologized, would you?” Eduardo asked suddenly, and when everyone looked up, his eyes were zeroed in on Mark with an odd, intense expression. Dustin accidentally dropped his fork with a clatter. No one paid him any mind.

 

Mark, put on the spot about it for the first time, looked uncomfortable. They all knew how his apologies went anyway; he always found a way to blame the other person for being offended at his behaviour. Anyway, it didn’t matter, because all he said was: “You wouldn’t, though.”

 

Dustin sighed, and everyone finished eating in silence.

 

Later, after Eduardo had done the dishes with Dustin’s help, the four of them sprawled in Chris’ living room, thoughtful and silent.

 

At last, Dustin spoke up. “Why don’t you have a Christmas tree?”

 

Chris, whose back was resting against Dustin’s shoulder, and who was, for once, allowing the latter to stroke his hair, gave a vague shrug. “What for?”

 

“Well, what are you going to do Christmas morning?”

 

Chris was too comfortable to come up with an expression that was more than mildly puzzled. “Make coffee and read the newspaper?”

 

“On Christmas morning?” Dustin gawked.

 

“On  _every_  morning,” Chris replied. “Why do you think I had this big holiday dinner for you guys? There’s no point in having a big Christmas morning when you live by yourself.”

 

“So this was your Christmas?” Eduardo asked, sounding curiously (Chris thought) sad.

 

“My three Jewish atheist friends are concerned that their Christian atheist friend doesn’t celebrate Christmas,” Chris said wryly.

 

“I think,” Mark began suddenly, and they all turned to look at him, because he hadn’t said much of anything since they cleared the table. He cleared his throat slightly, unnerved by the sudden attention. “I think that sometimes it’s weird to think that we’re all – you know. Adults. So we don’t have to see our parents over the holidays if we don’t want to.”

 

“And there’s no one there to babysit us when we decide to live on Red Bull and Red Vines for weeks at a time,” Dustin added, catching onto the spirit of it.

 

“And we have to be accountable for our actions,” Eduardo said, and Mark looked sharply at him, but Eduardo was simply leaned back against the couch cushions, staring at the ceiling.

 

“And maybe we can’t be friends with everyone ever,” Mark concluded, still looking at Eduardo. “Maybe people finish with each other. Maybe you make decisions and then that’s that.”

 

“Maybe it’s not like that,” Dustin suggested. “Maybe – like – people are a part of each others’ – journey, if you will, and then sometimes they leave for awhile but they stay with you. And maybe they can come back and be a part of your – journey again. You know. If they want. And they can bring a backpack full of snacks or whatever.”

 

There was a brief silence. Then Eduardo said, “Dustin, I think you’re fairly drunk.”

 

And Mark laughed, just a little. Unable to help himself, Eduardo smiled at the ceiling.


End file.
